Scrapbooking

As many of you know, I am an avid scrapbooker. I have been scrapbooking since my oldest son was 18 months old. He's now 10. I have really grown & changed a lot in this craft but it's the one hobby I have stuck with the longest. I still have fun& enjoy it.

I first heard about scrapbooking in a parenting magazine. After my first son was born I, like a lot of new mom's, subscribed to a lot of (if not all!!) parenting magazines for advice on how to raise my child. In one there was a small one page blurb about one mom who was creating "one-of-a-kind" photo albums for her children. It listed some supplies she used & that was it. It caught my eye but I wanted to know more. Shortly after that another magazine came out with a much larger article about safely preserving photos. At the end of the article was a list of resources. I normally skip that type of thing, but this time I called a few companies & requested catalogs. Creative Memories was also listed so I called for a referral to a consultant. Amazingly there was one just in the next town from me. I say amazing because Maine is usually the very last place stuff like this starts!

I hosted my first CM party & I was hooked. I bought a package & got going on my first pages. My son's baby book no less. The funny thing about it was I forgot to remind people to bring photos. Two people remembered out of the five people there. One woman rummaged through her purse & had just happened to pick up some photos that day so she used those. Another took all of her wallet photos out & used those. I gave the last woman (who was my son's day care provider) photos of me pregnant with B.

I did end up redoing about the first 5-6 pages of B's baby book after I had been scrapbooking for about six years. They were so horrid to look at! LOL Now I can look at them & not cringe. My only regret is not taking photos of the "before" pages for comparison.

From that first class my love of scrapbooking grew. It blended my two favorite things - photography & creating something lasting. My dh & I were able to go on a once in a lifetime trip to England in the spring of 1998. He had a high school friend who was getting married. We were there for just over a week. It's amazing how my photography changed once I knew about scrapbooking! My wedding & honeymoon photos fit in one small 30 pages CM album. I had about 12 rolls of film to develop after our time in England. That was the first album I completed - England. I even went to my first large crop ALONE since none of my friends were in to it at that point. I spent the entire time working on it & got lots done! I still remember walking in to that crop & watching people lug in supplies after supplies after supplies. I had one small tote that carried everything I used let alone owned! Hah! If they could see me now!!!!!

By the end of 1999, I signed up as a CM consultant & worked at that for about 14 months. It was fun while it lasted, but the "bads" outweighed the "goods" of it all, but that's another long story so I'll skip it for now. During that time, however, my husband & I bought a house. I finally had space to host crops. I began having monthly crops at my home, a practice I continued even after I stopped selling CM. Since 2000 I have hosted or attended a crop just about every month.

Now I go to my sister's once a month. It's just her & I and our good friend T who get together now. We have SO much fun. We all look forward to our once monthly get together. We just had our gathering yesterday. It was unusual in that we spent a lot of time on Saturday shopping instead of scrapping.

There is a scrapbooking store about 1-1/2 hours away from me which we all love. It's one of the best in the state IMHO. However, it's in a small mill town in the western part of the state near pretty much nothing. The economy couldn't support it so it's closing. Bad for them but good for us. My sister & I went last week when everything was 20% & got some really nice deals including a bunch of grab bags. I bought two marked at $3 total & got at least $45 worth of stuff!!! Well, when we went yesterday it was all marked down to 50% off & they still had a bunch of stuff. My big purchase yesterday was cardstock (61 sheets to be exact) - nice Bazzill paper too. I pretty much have anything I could possibly need for the next two years to work on my albums!

One other nice thing was that we exchanged early Christmas gifts. T, being the sneaky chick she is, coordinated the purchase of Sizzix Sidekicks for both B & myself. So T & I split the cost of one for B. Then B & T split the cost of one for me! T uses her coupons at AC Moore & Michael's wisely. [big grin!] Then T gave me an early birthday present - my first set of Sizzlets!!!! They were a set of four Christmas ones - Doddlebug design (which I LOVE!). Then I bought myself some more at the LSS - a set of four beach ones & a pumpkin. I'm now on the lookout for a Sizzlet alphabet for a really good deal. Here's a photo of my new toys:

Now I'm working on revising my "scrapbooking plan" & trying to figure out how much time & energy & creativity I want to put in to my albums. I'm so horribly behind I doubt I'll ever catch up. I scrapbook for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I want the stories to be left behind. I want my boys to know their heritage, the people they came from, the cute things they said & did as kids, and the fact that their grandparents & parents WERE actually kids at one point. So that means I need to continue simplifying & not buying the coolest, hottest, newest trendy/faddish thing on the market, but just keep doing my thing & working - oh & trying to do more at home since one time a month just is NOT enough to get all these photos into usable scrapbooks!